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By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com

January 23, 2009 - The government of Ireland on Thursday announced a "National Broadband Scheme" to deliver broadband throughout the island nation, investing €223 million (U.S. $362 million) on high-speed internet infrastructure. Ireland currently has over 1.2 million subscribers to broadband, according to the government of Ireland, which provides a detailed map of broadband availability by location, by company and by speed. The National Broadband Scheme will provide broadband to the remaining 10% of Ireland's population -- or approximately 33% of the area of the country. (See Ireland's map.) Under the plan, Ireland aims to have 100% coverage by September 2010, with half of the area under the scheme will be covered by the end of 2009. The Irish government's announcement comes at a time when the United States Congress is considering a potential U.S. $6 billion investment in broadband infrastructure as part of the stimulus package. See BroadbandCensus.com's Broadband Wiki for coverage. With a population of 4.2 million, the $362 million Irish investment amounts to a per capita investment in broadband of $87 per Irish citizen. If the $6 billion figure passed by the House Appropriations Committee continues, the proposed investment would amount to...

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News

Editor's Note: The following story was published in TR Daily on September 26, 2008, and is reprinted with the permission of Telecommunications Reports International, Inc. Notwithstanding the fact that content on the BroadbandCensus.com web site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License, this article is and remains Copyright 2008 Telecommunications Reports International, Inc.

By Lynn Stanton, TR Daily

State and federal government programs to develop maps of broadband service availability at a granular level must overcome objections by carriers to revealing what they view as proprietary information, although carriers may actually find the resulting maps beneficial, panelists at the Broadband Census for America Conference said today.

Speaking at the conference held at the Washington office of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Art Brodsky, director-communications at Public Knowledge, criticized the carriers’ objections to broadband mapping projects by questioning the proprietary and competitive value of information on where carriers have already deployed broadband services. He noted that carriers are not being asked about future deployment plans, which would more clearly involve competitive concerns.

Drew Clark, executive director of BroadbandCensus.com, which was one of...

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The Broadband Census for America Conference welcomes the nation’s foremost broadband policy-makers and experts on broadband data collection, distribution and mapping. Also see the official conference web page at http://broadbandcensus.com/conference.

Conference Bios and Key Resources:

• Art Brodsky, Public Knowledge
  • Art Brodsky has been the communications director of Public Knowledge since February 2004. He is a veteran of Washington, D.C. telecommunications and Internet journalism and public relations.Art worked for 16 years with Communications Daily, a leading trade publication. He covered Congress through the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other major pieces of legislation. He also covered telephone regulation at the the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and at state regulatory commissions. In addition, he has covered the online industry since before there was an Internet, coming in just after videotext died but before the World Wide Web. Art was later an editor with Congressional Quarterly, with responsibilities for the daily and Web coverage of telecom, tech and other issues. Art’s freelance work has appeared in publications as diverse as the Washington Post, Huffington Post, TomPaine.com, TPMcafe and the World Book encyclopedia....

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Blog Entries

By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, September 22 - Today is September 22, 2008. Happy One Web Day and Happy One Web Week! BroadbandCensus.com has been involved in the preparations for One Web Day since the beginning of summer. We believe that this day marks an opportunity for all internet users to pause, take stock, and ask themselves: what are my broadband internet options? BroadbandCensus.com, a free web service, can help you answer that question. The message that BroadbandCensus.com brings to One Web Day is three-fold:

1. 1. Take the Broadband Census! As part of One Web Day, we encourage everyone to go to http://broadbandcensus.com/census/form, and answer a seven-question survey. You will then have the opportunity to take our free speed test, which allows you to compare your promised with your actual internet speeds.

1. 2. We are wishing you a One Web Week because of our Broadband Census for America Conference THIS FRIDAY, September 22, 8:30 a.m. at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. See http://broadbandcensus.com/conference.

1. Sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Texas at Austin, Virginia Tech and BroadbandCensus.com, the Broadband Census for America Conference will be the first major event about publicly-available data about broadband connections. Featured...

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Key Academics, State Officials and Broadband Data Collectors to Speak

Embassy of Ireland to Give Luncheon Keynote Address on Publicly-Available Broadband Data

Coverage of the Broadband Census for America Conference

• Broadband Census for America Conference Web Site
• Tvol's Flickr photostream of the Broadband Census for America Conference
• "Propriety Data Cited as Challenge for Broadband Mapping," by Lynn Stanton, TR Reports
• "Regulators, Officials Debate Need for National Broadband Policy, Fund," by Carrie DeLeon, TR Reports
• "Service Providers Should Report Better Metrics, Panelists Say," by Scott Sleek, Broadband Advisory Services, Pike & Fischer
• "U.S. Copes with Broadband Statistics Void," IP Democracy
• "Guessing at data," Susan Crawford's blog
• "Experts call for broadband transparency,"by Maya Prabhu, ESchool News
• American Library Association District Dispatch

For Immediate Release

WASHINGTON, September 8, 2008 – Many of the nation’s foremost broadband policy-makers and experts will analyze and discuss best practices for improving the collection and sharing of public data about high-speed internet access at the Broadband Census for America Conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday, September 26, 2008. Panelists at the half-day conference include Rachelle Chong, California Public Utility Commissioner; broadband data pioneer Professor Kenneth Flamm...

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'Broadband Census for America' Conference to Focus on Sharing Publicly-Available Broadband Data

Save the Date Announcement

Editor's Note: The agenda for the Broadband Census for America Conference was released on September 8, 2008, and is available at http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=569. Please visit the page for fuller details about the conference program. WASHINGTON, August 7, 2008 - BroadbandCensus.com, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Texas at Austin's Robert S. Strauss Center, and the Virginia Tech eCorridors Program invite government officials, academic researchers and other key stakeholders to a half-day conference on collecting and sharing public data about high-speed internet access. The conference, “Broadband Census for America,” aims to assemble state, local and federal officials engaged in gathering and mapping information about broadband availability, competition, speeds, prices and quality of service. Academic researchers will lend their perspective on the importance of universal broadband data. Keynote speakers scheduled to address the conference include:

• Eamonn Confrey, First Secretary, Information and Communications Policy, Embassy of Ireland. Mr. Confrey has confirmed as the luncheon speaker on “Mapping out Broadband for Consumers: The Irish Experience.”

• Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey*, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. (*Invited to present opening keynote.)

The conference will also feature two...

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